Organizing Practice and Practicing Organization: An Outline of Translational Mobilization Theory

Understanding the relationship between emergent social phenomena and the stabilizing mechanisms that make collective action possible is a long-standing concern in social science, but remains an inadequately theorized area. This article sets out a middle range theory—translational mobilization theory—to address this challenge. Adopting a practice-based approach, we connect interactionist perspectives on social order, analyses of sociotechnical networks, and theories of strategic action fields, to describe and explain how projects of institutionally sanctioned collective action are progressed by actors interacting with and through socially constructed objects. Investigating these mechanisms is a prerequisite to advancing empirical and theoretical understanding of the complex organizational processes and structures that characterize contemporary society.